Sunday 10 February 2013

Have a Brownie Day

Today is Have a Brownie Day. As my lovely housemate Bella is a baker extraordinaire, I get to eat - amongst  many other delicious desserts - lovely homemade brownies all the freaking time. Jealous? You should be. They are tasty, delicious, and best of all, omnipresent. Bella was also the first person to introduce me to the wonder that is having both custard and ice cream with your dessert, so you don't have to choose. It's incredible that this didn't occur to me before, but I am not known for my sweet tooth, being the kind of lass that would choose a pie over a doughnut any day of the week, so I guess it just never cropped up before.


Myself, I am not much of a baker. By that I mean I have baked approximately 2 cakes and one batch of chocolate buns in my entire lifetime, so I am hardly a dab hand. I can cook just fine, and I keep meaning to get around to learning how to bake - especially after eating Bella's tasty baked goods and watching all of the delicious creations they whip out on The Great British Bake Off - but I'm not quite there yet. 
The Great British Bakeoff 2012 Finalists

 I blame this entirely on the internet, as every time I look at baking recipes online I get disproportionately annoyed by the constant use of 'cup' as a term of measurement. WTF is a cup? A teacup? A mug? How on earth are you supposed to know? I have looked into this and discovered that one cup is apparently the equivalent of 226.8 grams which, although it's a bloody stupid number is at least something I can work with. However, you must still bear in mind that this weight is variable depending on what the mythical cup contains, whether it be butter or flour or the soul of a tormented baker. This also does not excuse the certain recipes that I have stumbled across that call for 2 5/8ths of a cup of something. ?!?!?!?! Just give me the freaking measurement in grams, for christ's sake! I'm making a cake, not trying to divine the true meaning of life using nothing but algebra. Honestly. Thus, I have not done much baking, really. 

Time for some brownie trivia. Have you ever wondered whether a brownie is technically a cookie or a cake? Me neither. So anyway, they are technically classed as a type of cookie, and this is because brownies, like cookies, are finger food and cake is generally eaten with a fork. I tend to cover my brownies in custard and ice cream then eat the lot with a spoon, but whatever. The name brownie comes from the lovely rich colour of the bar cookie, as you would expect. Whilst looking into the history of brownies in honour of this joyous day, I discovered that no-one really knows where brownies came from more specifically than the United States of America, at some point. There are, however, a number of twee myths surrounding the invention of the brownie, each of which claims to be the true story. So, let us delve into brownie lore... Different  creation myths state that a chef accidentally added melted chocolate to a batch of biscuits, or that someone was baking a cake which fell, creating the new dessert food. There is also a quite definitive statement regarding the creation of brownies, that I haven't been able to verify beyond the following paragraph;
This dessert was created in the kitchen of the Palmer House Hotel during the 1893 Columbian Exposition when Mrs. Bertha Palmer requested the chef make a "ladies dessert" that would be easier to eat than a piece of pie, and a smaller serving than a slice of layer cake, which could be used in box lunches at the Women's Building at the Fair. The first reference to this dessert as a "Brownie" is in a Sears Roebuck catalog published in Chicago in 1898. This recipe is still served today at the Palmer House Hilton on State Street and is one of their most popular confections.


The above cookbook is the earliest example of a printed 'brownie' recipe. The recipe itself, however, was in fact instructions regarding the creation of a molasses cake, and not a brownie as we would know it. The first legitimate 'cake brownie' recipe did show up in the 1906 edition of the same cookbook, however, and the brownie as we know it has been getting richer and more chocolaty ever since! Celebrating Have A Brownie Day is pretty easy - and obvious - just eat some delicious brownies. If you're feeling up to it, bake your own, if not, just buy some. I shall be dancing around in the kitchen with eggs telling Bella how much I love her and her baking while she does all the work >:) x

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